She gazed about at the walled-off area. A team of guards was taking up positions to protect the site, twenty-four-seven, until they could find some answers.
It was far from a fitting monument to the Fire Fly. But for now, it would have to do.
“Madame President?” A Secret Service agent prodded her, pointing to the waiting limousine—that was actually a tank. She could see they were nervous to have their new president standing out in the open, even in the middle of nowhere.
“Yes,” she said and took one last glance at the monitor.
It flickered...
NEW YORK CITY
Two thugs, decked out in tattoos and sports jerseys, entered the plush penthouse suite, where the legendary kingpin known as “Sixty-Eight” sat smoking a cigar behind his fine mahogany desk.
Mounted onto the front of the desk was a horn of the extinct black rhinoceros. A gift from an arms dealer working in the African Conflict. The thugs made eye contact with it as they entered the room. Deference to the lost beast Sixty-Eight made mandatory upon entering.
They each had the arm of a man draped in a long black coat with a hoodie that concealed his face.
“Hey, boss, look what we found snooping around the cash room,” one of the thugs said.
Sixty-Eight sighed, took a puff on the cigar, and shook his head. “Bring him in.” His voice was deep and powerful, even when he spoke softly.
The man kept his head lowered as the thugs escorted him to the front of their boss’s desk as they’d been instructed to do anytime an intruder was caught alive.
“Alive” was not a condition the intruder would be in for long.
Sixty-Eight seemed almost regretful about what he was going to have to do. “You gotta name, genius?”
The man stayed silent.
“You know where you are? Who you trying to steal from?”
The man said nothing for a second, and just when the legendary Sixty-Eight opened his mouth to speak again, the man said, “Wasn’t stealing. Want to join up.”
“Join up?” Sixty-Eight laughed. “We’re the Venom 13. You don’t just join up, bitch. You gotta be invited.”
“You’ll want to invite me.”
Sixty-Eight was amused. “Oh yeah, why’s that?”
“I’m going to take your place.”
The man had said it calmly, not a hint of malice. Still, it unsettled the kingpin.
Sixty-Eight shot the two thugs an angry glance.
“We searched ‘im, boss. He ain’t got no piece,” one of them said.
“Ain’t got nothing on ‘im,” the other clarified.
“Man, my name is Sixty-Eight. You know where I got that name?”
The man said nothing.
“Sixty-Eight is the number of motherfuckers that have tried to take my throne. See, we got a code. You kill the king, you take his throne. And you know how many of those motherfuckers I left alive?”
“Zero, boss.”
Sixty-Eight just smiled. “Been thinking about a name change anyway.”
The man in the hoodie only became aware of the half dozen or so gangbangers spread around the room when they all chuckled.
The man lifted his head. “But I know your fears. I’ve been reading you this whole time.” The man let the hoodie slide off his head.
Ben Drayger glared at Sixty-Eight with a maniacal gleam in his eyes. He couldn’t explain it, but ever since Sophia, the nervousness, the personality shifts, they were gone.
Sixty-Eight rose from his chair. “Hey, you look familiar to me. Who is this punk?”
“Didn’t have no ID on ‘im, boss”
Drayger smirked. “Fear is a highly individualized experience. Still, humans respond to a few basic fear images. It’s written into the ancient code of our species. While you were talking I found yours. Look.”
Sixty-Eight glanced down and saw it. A black widow spider crawling straight up his chest, headed for his neck and face. “Shit!” The big man tried to swat it away, but he kept missing it. Another appeared on his arm. Then another on his shoulder.
They were dropping from the ceiling in droves.
The thugs holding Drayger let loose of their grip as more spiders fell on them. The half dozen other thugs in the room began to experience the same attack.
“It doesn’t really matter what the subject is. As long as your fear responders are triggered, you will fear something. The imagery just helps move it all along.”
None of them could hear him.
“Get ‘em off! Get ‘em off of me!”
Sixty-Eight and the others were swatting at them desperately, knocking themselves silly. The two thugs beside Drayger had given themselves bloody lips.
And then Sixty-Eight saw something that made him freeze in terror.
Crawling out of the baseboards from the far wall on his right, scurrying straight at him with jerky, frenetic movements, swarming over anything in their way, was an army of black widows. Side-by-side, they covered the floor. They scuttled toward Sixty-Eight with alarming speed.
Sixty-Eight scanned the room and saw the one avenue of escape from the torment. The blood pulsed in his ears, and in the tortured calculation racing through his brain, he settled on a solution.
He charged to his left, racing away from the black widows to his only viable escape. The large picture window that was covered by an enormous red silk carpet depicting a dragon devouring the world.
Throwing up his hands in front of his face, Sixty-Eight crashed through, glass shattering, the carpet ripping from its anchors in the wall. All of it sputtering out into the blazing sunlight of New York City that bathed the room in the light of midday.
He fell thirty-five stories to the pavement below.
Drayger killed the imagery, released them all from his grip. Calmly, he strolled over to the big leather chair Sixty-Eight had been perched in and eased himself into it. Flopped his feet up on the desk.
Just then a buxom blonde burst through doors like she owned the place, an exotic, luxurious fur around her neck.
“Hey, baby,” she said. “You ready to go to work?”
The others were all just picking themselves off the ground.
Drayger smiled at Paris and motioned for her to come sit on his lap.
“The name’s Neuro,” Drayger said. “And I’m your new boss.”
EPILOGUE
FOUR MONTHS LATER
THE WHITE HOUSE - OVAL OFFICE
President Leslie Gibbons sat at the Resolute Desk.
On this day, a lone and very familiar guest sat across from her on one of the room’s many fine wooden armchairs. His cape was tucked beneath him.
Leslie chuckled. “I still have nights when I wake up and think I’m underground,” she said.
The Revolution glanced about the room. “It’s hard to get used to the sunlight.”
Leslie scrutinized her guest. “What are you going to do now?” she asked.
The Revolution sat upright in his chair. “Awaiting my orders, Madame President.”
Leslie chuckled at his formality, even after all these years. “I have none. You can finally take that armor off, old friend.”
Revolution said nothing for a moment. “Does a soldier ever take his armor off?”
Leslie smirked at that.
She rose and motioned for him to join her. They strolled over to the large windows overlooking the Rose Garden. The entire site was under reconstruction. Gardeners hard at work.
“When the war ends, the soldiers go home,” she said. “Rebuild what was torn down.”
Revolution took in a deep breath. “I knew a soldier once.”
He drew his cape in around him. “Enlisted straight out of college, 82nd Airborne. Earned the Parachutist Badge and was dropped right down into the heart of Africa. Combat tested, promoted up the ranks. Eventually recruited for the most advanced officer and strategy training the Army had. Excelled at all of them. Made lieutenant colonel.”
Leslie seemed curious where he was
going with this. “Sounds like a hero.”
Revolution nodded. “He thought so, for a while. But it was Africa. The missions changed. So, he asked for a transfer. Sent to get his Masters. Physics at Illinois, another in military history and operations at the CGSC.”
Leslie looked puzzled by that one.
“The Army’s officer college,” Revolution clarified.
“Oh yes,” she said.
“Recruited by DARPA after that. Helped to stop the first Aztech attack.”
Leslie interrupted, eyed him suspiciously. “This soldier have a name?”
Revolution was quiet for a long moment.
Leslie realized he might never say. She was the president now. She could force him to yell her. If he refused it could be treason. For some reason that thought amused her.
Finally, he said, “Conrad Eckler.”
Leslie’s face lit with recognition. “Science advisor to President Kerrigan. One of Bailey’s protégés.”
Revolution nodded. “Young wife, new family. He’d met the future President Kerrigan serving in Africa. They became fast friends. When Kerrigan was elected, Eckler signed on to help. It was the happiest time of his life.”
Leslie seemed confused. “I thought he...”
“Was on Air Force One with the president? Yes.”
Leslie arched her eyebrows and lowered her head. “As was his family,” she said softly.
“When the EMP hit the aircraft it was already in turbulence,” Revolution continued. “The loss of power sent it into a death spiral. Many people lost their lives in those initial moments.”
Revolution paused for a moment. He was quiet.
Leslie waited.
The memories must have been painful.
“Eckler knew he had to get the president to the escape pod. But when he got him there, Kerrigan turned the tables on him. He’d seen enough injuries on the battlefield, he knew the signs in himself. The president had internal injuries, he wasn’t going to make it. So instead, he shoved Eckler into the pod and gave him one final mission: stop the Council.”
Leslie was still reeling to catch up. “So the president didn’t survive? I mean, you aren’t Kerr—?”
“The point is, that life is over. Sometimes the past can’t be brought back, no matter how much we want it to be,” Revolution said quickly.
“If Lincoln Kerrigan were here,” Leslie said with a twinkle in her eye, “I think he would say the job is done, the mission accomplished. It’s time for you to go home, shed the armor. Your president has nothing more to ask of you.”
Revolution peered down at his armored hands. “There is no home to go back to. No armor to shed,” he said somberly. “When James Scott and I made the decision of how we would fight back, we decided there would be no taking this armor off. That life is over. Forever.”
Leslie lowered her eyes to the floor. She thought of her own family. How much she missed them.
Revolution shook his head. “And this fight isn’t over. It’s unleashed forces beyond anyone’s control. I have to stop them.”
Leslie stared at him for a long moment.
“Well,” the president said, shooting him a sly smirk, “John Bailey always believed that the president needed his or her own guard of soldiers and spies. I always thought it was a dangerous idea.” Leslie arched her eyebrows. “But sitting in that chair”—Leslie shrugged—“it does kind of change you.” She raised a conspiratorial eyebrow at him. “Not too much, I hope.”
Revolution cocked his head; confidence entered his voice once more. “Just don’t go creating some kind of council, will you?”
Leslie snorted. “We’re going to face threats that we won’t even see coming until they’re at our doorstep.”
The Revolution nodded. “Rage, the Aztech, Von Cyprus, we’ve got quite an enemies list.”
“And I don’t suspect Mr. Sage or Mr. Howke are going to go very quietly into that good night.”
“No, I suppose they won’t.”
“Until we can stop this financial meltdown, I’m going to have my hands full with nothing but the economy. I’ll need backup. Folks I can really trust,”
Revolution nodded and thought about the list of who they should recruit. “We’ll need Lantern, obviously.”
“Who else?” Leslie asked, turning toward him.
“Ward, Rachel, Reynolds.”
“No doubt.”
“Spectral and Scarlett. If they’ll do it.”
“Can you trust them?”
“I think they’ve earned it.”
Leslie grimaced but nodded. She turned back to gaze out across the White House lawn. The sunlight danced in the Rose Garden.
Revolution did the same. For a long time.
“I never thought…never thought we’d get here,” he said finally.
Leslie considered the statement a moment. “You never thought you’d get here,” she amended.
Revolution said nothing.
She strolled closer to the window, peered out at the freshly replanted Rose Garden.
She lifted her chin, and her face was stern, resolute.
Presidential.
“The trees are nearly healed,” he said finally.
“Nearly,” she agreed. She glanced out across the majestic greenery of the Rose Garden. The newly laid sod, the pruned and replanted trees. “It’s all going to heal.”
The Suns of Liberty will return in:
THE SUNS OF LIBERTY: PROVIDENCE
Copyright © 2016 Michael Ivan Lowell
All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the author except for the use of brief quotations in a book review and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, write to [email protected] and include “permission request” in the subject line.
www.MichaelIvanLowell.com
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
Cover Illustration Copyright © 2016 by Jason Ganser
Cover design by Jason Ganser
Editing by Gabe Robinson
ISBN: 1484060814
ISBN-13: 978-1484060810
Acknowledgements
Well this is it. The “Council Trilogy” comes to a close. There are so many people to thank for this book and the series it is part of, I cannot list them all. But a few simply must be mentioned. A heartfelt thanks to my editor, Gabe Robinson, who has guided this entire series with his able hand and watchful eye. None of these books would be what they are without his excellent work. The talented Jason Ganser has once again created the perfect cover art for my book out of his generous heart and valued friendship. Thank you Shawn for making the two of you part of my life! A big thank you to my oldest friend David for helping to keep me inspired and dreaming. The members of my writing group—Becca Block, Michael Furlong, Chris Gebhardt, Maggie Karda, Michelle Lee, Rachel Owens, Bryan Seagrave, Dustin Weeks—for reading multiple versions of the book and offering many crucial suggestions and fruitful ideas. And finally, to my family, for the moral support and love that every writer needs to survive (and don’t we all). To my lovely wife, JoAnna, who has served as the series’ true hero, fulfilling a little bit of each role mentioned above. And for allowing a man who is far too old to do so, keep a little bit of the boy he once was alive and well.
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The Suns of Liberty (Book 3): Republic Page 45